Circumcision - good or harmful?

I know it's hard for people to hear - especially men who have been circumcised or parents who have circumcised their child.

I was responding to Michah's post:

Comment by Micah Oliver 13 hours ago I recommend Joe and Richard watch this person's videos on circumcision after listening to episode #28. Of special interest as they relate to the episode is the video(s) comparing female and male circumcision. They are all excellent videos, and I happen to like his approach.
http://www.youtube.com/user/freedom0speech

Male circumcision also effects female sexual pleasure. Removing the male foreskin reduces female pleasure when having sex with circumcised male vs an uncircumcised male. It is more pleasurable for a female, to have sex with a male who has a foreskin. It is more﻿ easy to climax. External clitoral stimulation is more necessary for a women to climax when having sex with a circumcised male.

I think at 5% it's not a high chance - and they do loose sensitivity and the glide mechanism of the penis. Obviously your husband was one of the unfortunate 5% who was in pain during sex and having erections with a foreskin. As is your son. It's obviously a subject that is important to you personally. But 5% isn't a high risk. It's not even half way for risk. I don't think it's the norm to circumcise in Australia or Europe. Which means that the 95% can have their foreskin in tack. Unfortunately there are always going to be those who don't have it perfect, we are none of us perfect.

I know there are times when it is necessary but majority of the time it isn't necessary. Why cut off all foreskins for the sake of less than 10% who will benefit? Perhaps it's a family trait also? Like narrow hips. I don't know the exact figures but it works for the majority of men in Europe to have a foreskin. Americans seem obsessed with cutting them off - with no other reason that they want their son to look like dad. It's the same argument with giving birth - some women and babies lives are threatened in labour so we'll give everyone an elected c section.

I asked my mom a few months ago about why she had me circumcised. She had absolutely no reason for it. It's just what everybody did. The culturally accepted norm. That's a very poor reason to chop off part of a person's genitals.

I did some research on the topic a few months back and what I found is that circumcision was unheard of in the English speaking world outside of Jewish and Muslim communities until the late 19th century. It's first proponent was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (brother of the founder of the Kellogg company and the developer of their first cereal) an early Seventh-day Adventist health reformer (later kicked out of the church) who promoted it, not for good health, but to discourage masturbation.

It didn't spread very fast, but once Germ Theory came around it exploded based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how germs spread and the importance of good hygiene.

Dunn - I appreciate the point you are making regarding the requirement for informed decision making. However let me clarify, you are not advocating circumcision as a publicly funded preventative treatment for phimosis are you? I am also confused as to how you could justify the individual choice of preventative surgery for phimosis + other uncircumcised related health issues. All the reading I have done to date on this topic points quite clearly to the idea that circumcision does not meet the criteria for a public intervention/screening programme. This means the prevalence, cost and personal cost (ie; the trauma you speak of, which I have also witnessed firsthand) of the condition does not justify population wide circumcision. Naturally there are individual cases (alluded to earlier in this discussion) where the scales are tipped in favour of the procedure. You mention however, your sons case is not one of these. Therefore I wonder why you say you'd choose differently when the research just doesn't support such a decision at both a population level and an individual level (of a non high risk individual). I think I might have missed something, I'll go back and re-read your comments.

Sorry can't get the Edit function to work - I wanted to address this comment specifically.

"New born babies do not have grown penises and foreskins; they don't get erections. It doesn't take them weeks to heal".

Firstly, in the interests of accuracy, newborn babies certainly do have erections. Secondly, I think it's important that we be careful about attempting to marginalised the 'problems' (it's hard to classify them as specifically morbidity or mortality etc) associated with infant circumcision. Firstly the serious complication rates vary depending on where the procedure is performed and by whom. Secondly, reported 'complications' such as, but not limited to, vomiting, prolonged inability to urinate and disruption to breastfeeding are notoriously under reported. As well and importantly, methods of gauging infant physical and psychological pain and distress levels are continuously being refined & are, as we can all imagine, difficult. Thirdly, just for interest sake, many studies report mean healing time for infants as around 10 days.

Adult suffering which can be mitigated by the warmth of human comfort; the knowledge that time passes, and with it, pain; and by conscious understanding of the health necessity for that pain, of course is the only choice.

And a great deal of Vicodin, or something similar. That stuff was freaking awesome, when I had Mono, 4 or 5 years back. I imagine that dosing him up for a few days will help things significantly. That's another thing that you can't do, in the case of a baby.

I didn't think you were. I just wanted to clarify. Please don't feel 'shot down' that wasn't my intention. I was honestly trying to get you to expand on your thoughts. I appreciated you're rational tone and totally conur with your thoughts regarding evidence based decision making. This is what I love about atheism. It's not a world view that necessarily puts you on one side of a debate or another.

I am really pleased you looked into this issue. I think (as a mum of 4 & medical student myself) that whether by accident or otherwise you made a decision not to circumcise in line with current medical guidelines.

I am terribly sorry however to hear your son will have to be circumcised as an older child. Wishing you guys all the best.